Speed for the People

2 July 2009 by The Brigadier

At UKFast we’ve been talking about the need for website speed in terms of its benefits for SEO and dynamic content for some time. But let’s not lose sight of the driver behind making your web presence quicker – people.

Society today is a demander of speed and the internet is no exception. Google says that just milliseconds subconsciously deter people from staying on a webpage. In fact the search giant is so interested in speeding up the web that they’ve pinpointed this as their major focus and launched the Google speed website.

So, why speed? The basic fact is that a speedy service gives people a great customer experience. People do not like to wait – think about this next time you’re in a long queue at a shop.

The difference online is that it is much easier to go elsewhere.

For example, you’re on a website looking for garden furniture and you’ve found the double outdoor swing chair you want but the payment page is loading very slowly.

Firstly, this looks very unprofessional – broken links and slow pages don’t inspire your customers to view you as a trusted retailer. When 80% of Brits don’t trust companies to look after and protect their data why give them any further reasons to doubt you?

Secondly, online you can quite easily click back to Google and buy the second double outdoor swing chair on the list instead. Online your direct competitors are always your next door neighbours – which is not the case on the high street.

But don’t by any means let this increased level of competition make you shy away from the internet. This is the major platform of our time and every business, large or small, now needs to have an online presence. To satisfy your customers you need that presence to be fast. What’s stopping you?